Report (1st Day)

Part of Policing and Crime Bill – in the House of Lords at 6:24 pm on 3 November 2009.

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Photo of Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Spokesperson for the Home Office 6:24, 3 November 2009

My Lords, I am glad that we are returning to the Bill on Report because there are still many extremely important issues to debate. I am sure that the Minister shares with me some disappointment that we have to start the first day of Report at 6.25 pm, giving us less than three hours to debate it today. Of course, we will abide by the rules of Report but we will not be able to curtail our arguments in support of our amendments. The Government chose to make two Statements today, which meant that the Bill has been delayed until now. Nevertheless, there are still huge issues to debate, and I warn the Minister that we will not be able to treat them with any less importance just because we have begun several hours late due to the Government's timetabling.

I turn to Amendment 1, which returns us to the issue of transparency in policing—policing being the subject of Part 1 of the Bill. In Committee, we debated whether ACPO should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Minister helpfully said that, although ACPO was registered as a private company limited by guarantee and was not open to FoI requests, it seemed to him that there were anomalies. I had rather hoped that between Committee and Report there might be a chance for the Government to solve those anomalies. However, no solution has been forthcoming and therefore I have tabled this modest amendment. It merely seeks to give the Government the power to solve the anomaly to which the Minister referred in Committee as regards the FoI Act, as they would be able to designate ACPO in the interests of transparency, and they would be able to do so as soon as was practicable.

This whole issue is of critical importance. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, put her finger on it in Committee when she said that,

"we need to understand the status of ACPO, not just as an organisation with members but now in its position of having a statutory role in appointments".—[Hansard, 22/6/09; col. 1366.]

It is that statutory role that leads me to table this amendment because I believe that ACPO's transparency is fundamentally important. Although it may not be governed by any statute and is a private company limited by guarantee, it now has a constitutional role to play. As we move on to the Report stage of a Bill that gives ACPO new powers, we need to have regard to that essential need for transparency.

ACPO says that it is aware of this debate. Its website is clear that it is not a staff association, although in Committee the Minister said that effectively it was. However, I believe that he was thinking of the Chief Police Officers' Association. ACPO's work involves setting strategy, and it has developed to the stage where we believe that it should now be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. It is doing a lot of work in the public interest. It sets guidance on all sorts of things of incredible interest to the public, from the ACPO strategy for children and young people, for example, to guidance on the use of incapacitant spray. It also gives guidance on a subject that is very topical at the moment—cannabis possession for personal use, although when I looked at its website today, that was currently unavailable, which may say something about the state of the controversy. The public need to know as much as possible about discussion in ACPO, advice received and so on. It is right that it should be subject to the FoI Act. I beg to move.